A Penny For Your Thoughts

Grown men and women playing with Legos? At first glance, that’s what seemed to be happening last Wednesday as 300 urban planners, elected officials, environ-mentalists, and others gathered at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, D.C. for an extraordinary “visioning” exercise to figure out how this region will handle an estimated two million more people and 1.6 million more jobs in the next 25 years.

The exercise, known as Reality Check, is based on similar work that began in California and Utah several years ago. Sponsors included the Urban Land Institute, the Coalition for Smarter Growth, and the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments. Using large tabletop maps of the region, participants were directed to use colored Lego blocks to “build” the future. Each of 30 table groups had to develop guiding principles and then use those principles to plot growth using white, blue, and yellow Legos. Each Lego block had a numerical value – yellow for 3000 households, blue for 6000 jobs; the white Legos represented existing density for acre. Guiding principles at my table included focusing development along transit, preserving green space, and adding both population and jobs to the core city and Prince Georges County.

Each map was identical, and stretched from Annapolis on the east to Fauquier County on the west, from Howard County on the north to Spotsylvania County in the south. The map was overlaid with a numbered grid indicating each square mile, and was color coded for the current development densities. Jurisdictional boundaries were removed, and most major roadways were identified only with a route number. Existing Metro, MARC, and VRE stations also were identified.

The outcome often depended on who was assigned to the table. My table had a planning official from the Fredericksburg area who easily plotted future growth there, but I noticed that other tables had barely any Legos there. Another table had two people from Richmond, who just didn’t understand the relationship of mass transit to development. Several tables had Prince Georges County officials who helped plot significant job growth there, but other tables clearly missed that expertise.

After more than two hours of plotting growth and carefully placing and replacing Legos on the maps, the results were scanned into laptop computers for analysis and 3-D visualizations. A brief overview of the results was presented to participants as part of the afternoon program; a more detailed analysis of the results will be prepared for release in April. The outcomes of this process are expected to be reflected in future policies and practices implemented by local jurisdictions during the next decades. Supervisor Penny Gross may be emailed at mason@fairfaxcounty.gov

Supervisor Penny Gross may be emailed at mason@fairfaxcounty.gov